Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation
Olga Sanchez Saltveit
By
Published on
April 29, 2021
by Olga Sanchez Saltveit
The Journal of American Drama and Theatre
Volume 33, Number 2 (Spring 2021)
ISNN 2376-4236
©2020 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
The Black Latinx community represents a significant portion of the Latinx[1] population, particularly in regions of the US where many Latinx reside. In New York, 23%, in California, 15%, and in Florida, 12% of the Latinx community identify as “Afro-Latinx.”[2] These regions also encompass the most established centers of Latinx theatre making in the country, so it is surprising that Afro-descendant Latinx experiences have not been well represented in Latinx dramaturgy except in the appreciative nods toward AfroLatinx cultural heritage found in music, dance, and spirituality. The legacy of hierarchical colonial racism which infiltrates and informs Latinx anti-Blackness has also been omitted from dramatic discourse. “Racial discrimination is a skeleton in the closet of the Latin@ community,”[3] writes Carlos Flores. The absence of the Black Latinx experience in Latinx dramaturgy is simultaneously an act of anti-Blackness and a denial that anti-Blackness in Latinidad exists. However, as Daphnie Sicre[4] notes, the early twenty-first century has ushered in an era in which “Afro-Latinx are no longer non-existent or invisible in theatre,” and the rise of work authored by AfroLatinx on numerous themes calls for “a reconfiguration of the canon: Afro-Latinx theatre is crucial for the survival of Black theatre and its intersectionalities between Latinx and African Americans.”[5] Here, I focus on the work of playwright Guadalís Del Carmen who shines a light on the anti-Blackness found within the Latinx community of the US and Latin America, that is, anti-Blackness targeted toward people who might also identify as Latinx, or, AfroLatinx.
UnidosUS defines an “Afro-Latino” as “an individual of African descent from Latin America or an individual who has one parent of African descent and another of Latino descent.” According to Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, “the term Afro-Latin@ has surfaced a way to signal racial, cultural, and socioeconomic contradictions within the overly vague idea of ‘Latin@.’ In addition to reinforcing those ever-active transnational ties, the Afro-Latin@ concept calls attention to the anti-Black racism within the Latin@ communities themselves.”[6] The ideology of mestizaje attempted to homogenize the Latinx identity as one of racial mixture that blended myriad cultures and backgrounds, formed by syncretism, juxtaposition, fusion, and resistance. However, many racial and phenotypical identities exist within Latinidad that continue to be subjected to the legacy of European, primarily Spanish, colonization strategies including the formation of racialized hierarchies. Colorism and phenotypical discrimination pervade Latinx culture to this day, evident in the overwhelming presence of lighter-skinned Latinx in positions of power and influence, including popular media. “It is rare to see Latin@s of African descent on Spanish-speaking television or in movies. It is equally rare to see them advertising products in national Latin@ magazines.”[7][8] This privilege surfaces in the private sphere as well, within families and among friends, where one might hope for respite from racism. Thus, the term AfroLatinx, a non-binary update, intentionally complicates Latinx identity to embrace and celebrate African descent and illuminate the racism that persists in public and private.
Latinx theatre since the mid-twentieth century has dedicated itself to challenging misrepresentations and harmful stereotypes of the mainstream by creating dramas that humanize Latinx and Latin Americans in the gaze of the mainstream White Unitedstatesian audience and the “American” theatre. In myriad plays revolving around issues of social justice, the marginalized Latinx can be seen struggling against the dominant White culture.[9] In the latter quarter of the twentieth century, Latinx feminist and queer voices disrupted this dynamic, arguing that their discrimination within the Latinx community also needed to be addressed on stage.[10] In the ‘90s and early aughts, the Latinx experience of anti-Black racism from the larger White mainstream was powerfully documented by Latinx playwrights such as Josefina Baéz, Carmen Rivera, and Candido Tirado. However, the experiences of discrimination faced by Black Latinx from within the Latinx community remains less visible on Latinx stages. I have previously argued that Black Latinx are more likely to be seen on stage in Latinx roles than to be written about in Latinx plays.[11] Yet that argument is complicated by the reality that Black Latinx actors such as Del Carmen and Crystal Román, who is also cited in the article, are too often overlooked for casting in projects that should include them. Latinx anti-Blackness is so embedded in the culture and so often inflicted presumably without intended malice (as for example, in families that encourage their children not to stay out in the sun too long so as not to darken their skin tone further) that injustice and harm appear to be accepted as inevitable interpersonal insensitivity, not worth public scrutiny.
That invisibility is assuredly changing, as Sicre details in her 2018 chapter on “Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today.” As Sicre notes, playwright Guadalís Del Carmen was highlighted in the 2018 Latinx Theatre Commons Carnaval of New Latinx Work, held at DePaul University in Chicago. She also performed in the 2015 Latina/o Theatre Commons Carnaval as an actor. However, as a Black Latina she more often found herself in the frustrating situation, too often echoed by others, of being “too Black to be cast as a Latina, and too Latina to be cast as Black.” A journalist by training, Del Carmen turned to playwriting to create roles for herself in the Chicago area where she grew up. Soon, she began writing roles for other Latinx actors who, like her, did not see themselves represented within Latinx theatre. Del Carmen’s work could not be more timely. In 2020, with the increased activism in support of #BlackLivesMatter, and the calling out/calling in from #WeSeeYouWAT, Latinx around the nation, including those of us in theatre, have been forced to acknowledge and address our community’s implicit anti-Blackness and how it shows up on our stages. Latinx theatre making has been so focused on Latinx oppression, that it has seemingly ignored its toxicity toward AfroLatinx. Del Carmen’s transformative works spotlight AfroLatinx experiences of Latinx racism, in ways that reflect its widespread and corrosive presence within the microcosm of family dynamics as well as in the larger political sphere. Below I focus briefly on two of her plays, My Father’s Keeper and Daughters of the Rebellion, and the strategies she employs to presence Blackness and anti-Blackness in Latinx storytelling.
My Father’s Keeper centers on a Dominican immigrant family living in Chicago. Del Carmen employs a telling strategy even before the play begins, making it clear through the descriptions of the dramatis personae that most of the characters are Black. The presence of an intentionally identified AfroLatinx family as the focal point of a Latinx drama was unique in 2013, when the play was first written, and remains rare. Many plays that could have been cast with Black Latinx actors, particularly those that centered on people who hail from regions with significant Afrodescendant populations such as Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, are by default of anti-Blackness cast with mestizo or White Latinx. As Luckett and Shaffer note, “White supremacy often controls and dictates what representations are allowed visibility, and because of this phenomenon ‘Black’ actors are often pigeon-holed within a limited barometer of what is perceived to be Blackness.”[12] Del Carmen corrects this error by stipulating the casting of Black actors, demanding the visibility of the Black who is also Latinx and the Latinx who is also Black. It is an Anzaldúan move[13] that dissolves powerful yet fictional borders between identities that in reality overlap.
Next, Del Carmen addresses Latinx colorism by calling for actors of different skin tones in specific roles. The titular father, Tirsio Gonzalez and son, Armando are both identified as “Dominican” and “Black Latino.” Juana Gonzalez, Tirsio’s wife and Mondo’s mother, is also identified as Dominican, and “Lighter in complexion than the rest of the family,” which would include Sofia, Mondo’s sister who is described as Dominican. From the outset, these character descriptions alone make it clear that skin tones are important details that will influence not only casting but potentially engage the embodied experience of the actor and influence audiences’ reception. Later on, Tirsio confirms this when he shares that in his home country, “if you don't have rich name, or have the light skin, or a friend in the right place, you not go far in your career.”[14] Colorism is of course a familiar dynamic in US African American history, provoked by nineteenth century white supremacy, according to bell hooks who recounts that "racist white folks often treated lighter-skinned black folks better than their darker counterparts, and … this pattern was mirrored in black social relations.”[15] Del Carmen demonstrates the shared hierarchy at work in Latinx and Latin American culture. Mondo has married Anne, a White woman, and they have a son. Juana praises her young grandson, saying “Mi chichí will be a great man. Con those eyelaches, and his bello curly rubio head. Se parece a un angel.”[16] To which her daughter Sofía replies, “A blond baby... just what you always wanted.”[17]
Del Carmen then investigates some of the shared and different experiences of anti-Black racism in the US by introducing the character of Daniel, who is identified as “African American” and who self-identifies in the script as Black. Daniel is Tirsio’s lover and confidante, and in their clandestine meetings they share their experiences as gay men who grew up in violently homophobic homes. Tirsio will never come out to his family as his experiences in the Dominican Republic have taught him that there is no place in his culture for homosexuality. Despite this, Tirsio and Daniel have a decades-long love affair. While Daniel seeks to align with Tirsio racially as well as sexually, Tirsio distances himself on the technicality that because he is Dominican, he is not Black. “The obviously Black baseball star of the Chicago Cubs, Sammy Sosa, for instance, becomes an indio (Indian) rather than a Black, since according to this national myth and tradition Dominicans ‘cannot be Black.’”[18] Haitians, argues Tirsio, are Black, while he and his son are, like Sosa, Indios. Tirsio’s internalized anti-Blackness is self-justified under the guise of nationalism. Del Carmen identifies this as a Latin American strategy. “In Latin America, nationalism takes over race. Because anti-miscegenation was not a part of Latin America, racism is seen as a US thing. I’m not Black. I’m not White. I’m Cuban, I’m Colombian, I’m Dominican.”[19] However, Daniel is not convinced, “The only difference between me, you and any Haitian,” he says, “is the boat stops of our ancestors.”[20]
Del Carmen is also of Dominican heritage, born and raised in Chicago where she met few Dominicans besides her large family. “When I stepped out of my house to go to school, to go to work, there really wasn’t a lot of people around me that looked like me or sounded like me. I did grow up around a lot of macro-aggression. I’ve actually gotten into the habit of no longer saying micro because the micro affects us on a macro level.”[21] Yet, Del Carmen’s work is inspired not just by her own personal experiences but by what she sees happening globally. “One of the things I wanted to do was drop the pen on anti-Blackness in Latin America.”[22] For Del Carmen, Latinx plays about Latin American revolutions omitted important conversations about the ways in which anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, and capitalism were integral parts of their dynamics. This awareness fueled her next play, Daughters of the Rebellion (previously titled, Tolstoy’s Daughters), which is set in an “unspecified Latin American country.” With this gesture, Del Carmen expands her statement on anti-Blackness in the Latinx community beyond the horizon of the US to include Latin America and to implicate the globe. This is an intentionally political act that illuminates the historic legacy of racialized and gendered hierarchies in Latin America which has yielded pervasive inequity. “Afro-Latinos comprise some 150 million of [Latin America]’s 540 million total population, and, along with women and indigenous populations, are among the poorest, most marginalized groups in the region.”[23] Del Carmen indicts Eurocentric White male supremacist ideology for the continued marginalization of those who are not White males.
The titular “daughters” are half-sisters Katya Libertad Córdova (Bates) and Fanya María Córdova, both in their early 20s, raised in the same rich and aristocratic home. However, Katya and Fanya’s experiences are worlds apart, and Del Carmen makes it clear that this is due to their appearance. As with My Father’s Keeper, Del Carmen describes the characters’ physical attributes in the Cast of Characters. Katya, the daughter of a revolutionary, is described as having “strong, dark features, Afro-Latina.” Her mother, Ester, her sister Fanya and her stepfather Daniel all have “light features,” as do Presidente Burgos and his son Ramón. Franco Montés is a revolutionary who “can be indigenous or black” and Angela, Franco’s accomplice, is “Afro-Latina.”[24] When the play begins, Fanya’s father, Katya’s stepfather, Daniel is a recently elected senator who becomes fast friends with the new President of the country. However, the President has initiated policies that are highly detrimental to the Black and Indigenous people of the country. His White supremacy becomes evident in his encounters with the Córdovas, when he makes it clear he neither trusts not expects much from Katya. In a telling early scene in which the newly elected President visits their home, he alludes to the girl, then nine years old, as a “mistake” and later, years into his Presidency, one “not to be trusted” among “Those people [who] can never be trusted.”[25]
As with My Father’s Keeper, in which racism intersected homophobia, Del Carmen complicates the oppressions experienced in Daughters of the Rebellion. In addition to overt anti-Blackness, the Indigenous people of this fictional nation are also under attack, forbidden to wear their traditional clothing in the capital (a negation of their public cultural identity), and are being removed from their land and executed. The play is further intersected with feminist concerns as Katya and Fanya realize that as women living in a blatantly patriarchal society, they will never be taken seriously. Even from her privileged position Fanya knows that “People still don’t believe a woman is capable of anything more than having babies.”[26] This coalitional alliance among Afrodescendants, the Indigenous, and women points to Del Carmen’s shared critique of male-dominated White supremacist ideology.
In response, Del Carmen’s fictional nation is in the midst of revolution, as Blacks, Indigenous, and feminists create underground movements and divergent plans which echo the strategies of civil rights movements of the twentieth century. The two half-sisters align themselves with different approaches. Fanya is working with the President’s son to bring charges against the President and his administration in an International Court. Katya’s approach is more militant, destroying government and financial buildings. Eventually Katya and Fanya’s two paths to liberation cross and contradict each other with fatal results. The play is violent, but certainly no more than real life.
The true revolution in Daughters of Rebellion as in My Father’s Keeper is the de-centering of Latinx oppression in Del Carmen’s dramaturgy. Unlike much of Latinx theatre, in neither play are the characters’ Latinx or Latin American identities the basis of their experiences of oppression. The Gonzalez family is Dominican and living in the US but the issues at the heart of My Father’s Keeper are Tirsio’s hidden sexual orientation and the self-denial of his Blackness. In Daughters of the Rebellion, Del Carmen removes the potential for anti-Latinx discrimination by situating the play within a Latin American country. If everyone is Latin American, then there is no discrimination on that basis. Del Carmen ironically twists the strategy employed by mestizaje ideology which falsely neutralized race into one raza cósmica and negated the existence of diverse racialized experiences. In Del Carmen’s works, Latinidad is neutralized. Further, the absence of distinct identification implies that this could be any Latin American country where Whiteness rules. It could also be the US.
Indeed, Daughters of the Rebellion emerged from a powerfully angry moment for Del Carmen as she witnessed yet more instances of anti-Black violence in the US.
I was pissed when I wrote this play. I watched a video of a neighbor taking footage of Michael Brown being killed, and that same day on C-span, I watched a documentary where Shola Lynch, a documentarian, was talking about her film, Free Angela Davis and all Political Prisoners. Fanya’s name was actually inspired by it; Angela Davis’ sister’s name is Fanya. I was watching this documentary and I literally sat there thinking to myself, ‘so nothing has changed.’ The first scene that I wrote was where Katya is about to be electrocuted, and the rest came from there… It was a response to the feeling, so Black people are not wanted anywhere, and the reality of being a Black person who’s a child of immigrants, and the realization that this is global, Black people are not wanted anywhere.[27]
Del Carmen was motivated by her identification with Black people, and then recognized the same struggles existed for her as a person of Latin American heritage. In the face of anti-Blackness, nationalism would not protect her, as it does not protect Tirsio nor Katya. Del Carmen writes to create change. She writes for a broad audience with “the hope that something resonates with them and the conversation can happen.”[28] And when her voice as a playwright was silenced by the theatre closures of spring 2020, she turned to more direct action.
Del Carmen’s 2020 off-Broadway debut was delayed by the COVID outbreak, so she joined the activism for Black liberation as an advocate for transformation in the field of Latinx theatre-making. Working with the Latinx Playwrights Circle (a project she co-founded) and The Sol Project (the producers of her COVID-interrupted show, Bees and Honey), Del Carmen invited fifty influential Latinx theatre makers around the country to a workshop on “Anti-Blackness in the Latinx Community” led by Radio Caña Negra. Facilitators Dash Harris Machado, Evelyn Alvarez, and Janvieve Williams Comrie provided rich content that delved into the history of Africans and Afrodescendants in Latin America, the continued racism there, and the ways in which contemporary Latinx cultures in the US have inherited and reinforced this legacy of anti-Blackness, even while simultaneously articulating a marginalized position. Latinx have certainly been subjected to injustices, including misrepresentation and harmful stereotypes. But in the US as in Latin America, despite the presence of accomplished AfroLatinx in all areas of the arts and other fields, White supremacy has helped generate an image of Latinx identity that excludes Blackness. As Del Carmen says, “I experienced a lot of anti-Blackness from what’s supposed to be my community, really feeling like I never was a full part of the Latinx community because I didn’t look like what a Latina is supposed to look like. I don’t look Italian. That’s what Latinos are supposed to look like.”[29] Recalling the feeling of unwantedness that angered her to write, she notes how it has helped her to home in on “How I use my art as a form of resistance to that feeling and what I pour back into the world which is a love of Black people and a love of being Black.”[30]
Del Carmen creates works that challenge the Latinx community to confront its anti-Blackness. In addition to writing dialogue that pulls no punches, her strategies include intentionally identifying her characters as Black, complicating casting by including skin tones in the descriptions, intersecting anti-Blackness with other forms of oppression including anti-indigeneity, homophobia, and sexism, and de-centering or removing Latinx oppression from the power dynamics in her settings. Del Carmen writes for AfroLatinx liberation, knowing this focus supports a larger cause: global Black liberation. Through dramaturgy and embodiment, Del Carmen roots out and reveals the racism embedded in Latinx culture and places it center stage so that it may be destroyed.
Olga Sanchez Saltveit, Assistant Professor of Theatre at Middlebury College, is Artistic Director Emerita of Milagro, the Pacific NW’s premier Latina/o/x arts culture organization. A director/devisor, scholar, and arts activist, her directorial work has been seen in Portland, Seattle, NYC, DC, Martha’s Vineyard, Peru, Venezuela, and Honduras. Olga served as co-artistic director of the People’s Playhouse in New York City and co-founding artistic director of Seattle Teatro Latino. She is a founding member of the Portland-based Latinx writers’ group Los Porteños; served on the Executive Committee and the Diversity Task Force of TCG’s board of directors, and currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Latinx Theatre Commons. She is a contributing scholar to the anthology of Latinx plays, Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New American Theatre, published by Northwestern University Press 2019.
[1] “Latinx” is an inclusive, non-gender binary term that began to replace the earlier, more familiar term, “Latina/o” and its variations which privilege binary gender identification. Because the term Latinx came into use more recently, the terms Latina, Latino, Latina/o, Latin@, and their plurals, are used in this article when they are appropriate to their era and authorship.
[2] UnidosUSblog, “Afro Latinos Archives,” UnidosUS Blog, 26 February 2019, https://blog.unidosus.org/tag/afro-latinos/ (accessed 27 April 2021).
[3] Carlos Flores, “Desde El Mero Medio: Race Discrimination within the Latin@ Community,” in The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 323.
[4] See “Afro-Latinx themes in Theatre Today” by Daphnie Sicre, for an extensive survey of theatre by AfroLatinx playwrights and performers since 1999.
[5] Daphnie Sicre, “Afro-Latinx Themes in Theatre Today,” The Routledge Companion to African American Theatre and Performance, edited by Kathy A. Perkins, Sandra L. Richards, Alexander Renee Craft, and Thomas DeFrantz (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 272-277.
[6] Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román, “Introduction,” The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 2.
[7] See The Afro-Latino Reader: History and Culture in the United States, a brilliant anthology edited by Miriam Jiménez Román and Juan Flores, for a vastly more profound discussion of the diversity of Afro-Latino history through scholarly essays as well as poetry, drama, and testimonio.
[8] Carlos Flores, 323.
[9] A few examples of this dramaturgical dynamic include Zoot Suit (1979) by Luis Valdez, Real Women Have Curves (1990) by Josefina Lopez, and Cherríe Moraga’s Heroes and Saints (1992).
[10] Examples include Blade to the Heat (1994) by Oliver Mayer, Clean (1995) by Edwin Sanchez, and Cherríe Moraga’s The Hungry Woman: Mexican Medea (1997).
[11] Olga Sanchez Saltveit, “(Afro)Latinx Theatre: Embodiment and Articulation,” Label Me Latina/o, special issue: Afro-Latina/o Literature and Performance (2017): 1–20.
[12] Sharrell D. Luckett and Tia M. Shaffer, “Introduction: The Affirmation,” Black Acting Methods: Critical Approaches (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), 5.
[13] “Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, middle and upper classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy” (Anzaldúa 20). “A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary" (Anzaldúa 25). For Gloria Anzaldúa, political boundaries such as the one between the US and Mexico were artificial and inadequate, failing to capture the complexity of the inhabitants who reside in adjacent lands. One was not simply on one side or the other but in a place that included both.
[14] Guadalís Del Carmen, My Father's Keeper (2018), 18.
[15] bell hooks, “Back to Black: Ending Internalized Racism,” Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representation (London: Routledge, 2015), 174.
[16] His beautiful curly blond head. He looks like an angel.
[17] Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper, 13.
[18] Mark Sawyer, “Racial Politics in Multiethnic America: Black and Latin@ Identities and Coalitions,” The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States, edited by Juan Flores and Miriam Jimenez Román (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 532.
[19] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020.
[20] Del Carmen, My Father’s Keeper, 46.
[21] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020.
[22] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020.
[23] “Afro-Latinos in Latin America and Considerations for U.S. Policy,” EveryCRSReport.com, Congressional Research Service, 22 January 2009. http://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32713.html (accessed on 27 April 2021).
[24] Guadalís Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion (2019).
[25] Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion, 30.
[26] Del Carmen, Daughters of the Rebellion, 74.
[27] Olga Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220 “Contemporary Latinx Playwrights” Middlebury College, personal conversation with Playwright Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020.
[28] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020.
[29] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020.
[30] Sanchez Saltveit and THEA 0220, personal conversation with Guadalís Del Carmen, 9 November 2020.
ISNN 2376-4236
Guest Editors: Nicole Hodges Persley and Heather S. Nathans
Guest Editorial Team for this issue: Mark Cosdon, Stephanie Engel, La Donna Forsgren, Javier Hurtado, Mia Levenson, Khalid Long, Derek Miller, Monica White Ndounou, Scot Reese
Co-Editors: Naomi J. Stubbs and James F. Wilson
Advisory Editor: David Savran
Founding Editors: Vera Mowry Roberts and Walter Meserve
Editorial Staff:
Co-Managing Editor: Casey Berner
Co-Managing Editor: Hui Peng
Advisory Board:
Michael Y. Bennett
Kevin Byrne
Tracey Elaine Chessum
Bill Demastes
Stuart Hecht
Jorge Huerta
Amy E. Hughes
David Krasner
Esther Kim Lee
Kim Marra
Ariel Nereson
Beth Osborne
Jordan Schildcrout
Robert Vorlicky
Maurya Wickstrom
Stacy Wolf
Table of Contents:
“Subversive Inclusion: Ernie McClintock’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble” by Elizabeth M. Cizmar
“Earle Hyman and Frederick O’Neal: Ideals for the Embodiment of Artistic Truth” by Baron Kelly
“A Return to 1987: Glenda Dickerson's Black Feminist Intervention” by Khalid Y. Long
“An Interview with Elaine Jackson” by Nathaniel G. Nesmith
"Playing the Dozens: Towards a Black Feminist Dramaturgy in the Works of Zora Neale Hurston" by Michelle Cowin Gibbs
"1991: Original Broadway Production of Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Antimusical The Mule-Bone Is Presented" by Eric M. Glover
“'Ògún Yè Mo Yè!' Pathways for institutionalizing Black Theater pedagogy and production at historically white universities" by Omiyẹmi (Artisia) Green
"Dancing on the Slash: Choreographing a Life as a Black Feminist Artist/Scholar" by Lisa B. Thompson
"Newly Discovered Biographical Sources on Ira Aldridge" by Bernth Lindfors
"Guadalís Del Carmen: Strategies for Hemispheric Liberation" by Olga Sanchez Saltveit
"A Documentary Milestone: Revisiting Black Theatre: The Making of a Movement" by Isaiah Matthew Wooden
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JADT publishes thoughtful and innovative work by leading scholars on theatre, drama, and performance in the Americas – past and present. Provocative articles provide valuable insight and information on the heritage of American theatre, as well as its continuing contribution to world literature and the performing arts. Founded in 1989 and previously edited by Professors Vera Mowry Roberts, Jane Bowers, and David Savran, this widely acclaimed peer reviewed journal is now edited by Dr. Benjamin Gillespie and Dr. Bess Rowen.
Journal of American Drama and Theatre is a publication of the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.